Private Roleplay Ima hot air balloon that could go to space

For Della

Octavian was sad without Mama around all the time now, and Coyote's large-and-in-charge presence was sorely missed, but at least he still had Papa, and Cerberus! The three of them still had plenty of fun, he thought: he got to see where Pennyroyal grew up, from the den he'd been born in himself to the forest he'd played in with his own siblings. It was better than the wooden den had been, he supposed, but it was also that much more quiet at night with less bodies in the den. Every night, he roused Penny crying, and every night, Penny talked him into the world of dreams with stories. He could not help it, not even as he grew older -- the silence, it rang in his ears until he wondered if he could even hear anymore. He'd tried to ignore it once or twice, but that usually led to him throwing up after his heartbeat got so loud he felt it rattling around in his skull!

If it annoyed Papa, he didn't show it. He always wiped the sleep from his own eyes before asking what sort of story he wanted, he answered the floods of questions every day as Tavi filled those quiet moments too, and he was always ready to play! Whatever he needed, his Father was there; rain or shine, hungry or needing to pee in the middle of the night, Pennyroyal Nightshade was there. the fact always warmed him.

The quiet was banished, and the nights were warm beside Cerberus and Papa. They were not quite whole without the rest of the family, but Tavi was content. Happy, even.

Happy enough to explore!

'Tavi, slow down!'

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Papa! Hurry! He didn't want to slow down! He did, marginally, and heard his Fathers hurried steps grow closer. He didn't really know where they were, but the scent of Elysium was VERY strong, like the day they'd come here -- this, he had learned, meant the borders were near. He wasn't allowed over them, he knew, but that was alone! And Papa was right there!

He pounced for a butterfly he had been chasing, missing his powder blue quarry by a large margin and squealing with joy as he crashed and rolled and without missing a beat, scrambled back to his paws to give chase again. It's movin'! He couldn't stay slow! He had to catch up with it!

ThingsWereFine ThingsWereFine ThingsWereFine ThingsWereFine.

Things were great.

Penny was not internally screaming as he wondered if he was doing it wrong every moment of every day since Mintaka and Coyote walked away. Sure, he had Verbena still, and he had Valeska and all of Elysium for advice and help, but it was stressful nonetheless. He was their sole parent - he had to make sure he brought Tavi and Cerberus food, made sure they were safe and present and knew not to go outside the borders, he had to make sure they were learning things!
It was all well and good when they were so young showing them how to do things in theory was good enough, but what about when the time came to really take them hunting prey? When they were big enough to want to spar? What was he supposed to do THEN?

For now, if keeping the kids busy and telling stories till they fell asleep was the worst of it for now, he'd take it.

He'd even chase across half the territory after his ginger son just so he could tail a butterfly. Man, he had so much more energy than Penny - how was it possible for his little legs to move so fast!?

Tavi, slow down!

For a moment, he saw the golden form lag, and then there was a plea to hurry. They'd been hurrying for so long! When did it end! It was moving - of course it was, it was a butterfly being chased by a vibrant, bioluminescent wolf pup! If he were the size of a flower petal, he'd be running too!

It was such a simple thing, yet hardly simple at all.

The small girl had gone to sleep in one place, nestled warm with her parents and siblings like she would every other night since the day she’d been born. Routine, especially as young as she was.

But, when she awoke, it had been amongst a nest of tall grasses in the underbrush of a forest completely foreign to her.

Everything was so fuzzy. Her head hurt, stuffy.

The home she’d known and the lands around it had a unique smell that permeated no matter how far one wandered. The whole area held a distinctness that she had memorized, learned its comforts and familiarities.

Where she was now held none of that, no spark of recognition in anything around her.

”Mamma? Papino?” Little ears lay flat against her head as she stood from the soft bed of grass, posture huddled. ”Uccellino?” Her bird, also nowhere to be seen.

Fear clenched her heart as little paws took her scrambling backwards, nestling her between a couple of small trees. They created a meager alcove for her to wedge herself, hiding the pup with very little efficiency. Della hardly cared or even noticed, her instinct to cover herself quelled regardless of it was really working.

She wasn’t sure how long she was there before she heard the sounds of voices. Unfamiliar, just as everything else. It made her tremble, disturbing the leaves with her shaking.

The boy, when he broke through her sightline, couldn’t have been much older than her, if he even was. Around her age, regardless, which made her feel a pang of something she couldn’t quite distinct. Perhaps yearning, the missing of the parents and kin she wasn’t even aware that she’d never see again. Yet.

Things kept getting more and more confusing.

Her face scrunched with a quiet snarl, watching the movements until she caught sight of the larger of the two. The boy’s father, from their words, and she pressed ever closer to the forest floor. Her pelt in the dirt gave her a modicum of camouflage, though as a whole she surely stuck out. She was noisy, not particularly hidden even with the trees.

”Go away!” Eyes scrunched shut, she’d bark out a loud warning, showing her little teeth in a display of her anger. For she was surely angry on top of everything else. Where was her family?

That multicolored gaze opened again a short moment later to look at the boy and his butterfly prey, and with another bite of sound, she’d yell, ”And leave that butterfly alone!”

There was the smell of something --someone-- else nearby, but Tavi couldn't quite place it. New and not of Elysium, but this, to him, didn't automatically mean danger. That was what Papa was here for; to keep the scary things at bay, to show him the way back home, to get him food, until Octavian had learned it all for himself. Even, apparently, to chase butterflies until a watchful eye was no longer necessary.

He didn't think to follow the smell, so engrossed in the fluttering insect, but it lead him that way anyways.

He might not have noticed the girl at all, had she not moved to flatten herself. His gaze was on the pale blue bug, and Della was but another brown blur against the tree-trunks and the dirt filling his peripheries. The tremble of the leaves was just the breeze ruffling his fur, and nothing else mattered but that butterfly.

But the predator building in the young boy saw the swift movement, and his gaze was finally torn to her. Surprise lit his gaze. Oh! But it seemed like the moment he really looked at her, she was telling him to leave. Tavi's tail flicked with uncertainty, and he cast his gaze up to look at a frowning, but sad-looking Pennyroyal finally looming above him. Papa! Look! Go away, she said.

And leave that butterfly alone.

Tavi blinked his ringed gaze at her, head tipping comically to the side.

But it's pretty!

Penny could hardly tell if Tavi was actually trying to catch the butterfly or just wanted to chase it about - not even a kid, not even HIS kid, could be so uncoordinated that it took them half a territory to catch a butterfly! In fact, most of the time he'd seemed quite distant in his swipes and jumps that the young father was starting to suspect it was just a fun little game.

At least it wasn't a rabbit, he told himself. He'd still be running after Tavi!

As it was, he'd finally stopped, and Pennyroyal took a deep breath to fill his winded lungs as he finally reached his son. The girl was already pressed to the ground, but his sense of smell was better honed than Tavi's, and his dual gaze fell upon her with shock. She was far, far too young to be on her own - no older than his own two. What was she doing here? No other scents surrounded her, as if she'd just been settled here upon a border by a loner smart enough to use the pack-scent to defend their baby while they hunted. There was no indication she'd even wandered here, simply that she was. Tavi finally pointed her out, and approaching, he rested a paw briefly upon the little golden back as if tell him to stay.
Pity welled in his heart. Many entered Mythris by way of magic, stolen away from worlds before - stories inside the pack of such people weren't rare, and even the poor sheltered Nightshade knew.
But a poor little girl?

She snarled at them to go away, scared, and Penny's ears fell back, head dipping as if he might've obeyed her sharp words. But he didn't move, only bent in upon himself with uncertainty. He was the last person to go around stealing kids, but this one.... she was alone.

He couldn't leave her that way.

Luckily, while he was processing, Tavi was making friends. Ish? Sorta? The girl also hissed at the boy specifically to keep away from the bug, and Penny's heart swelled at her bold nature even though she was clearly scared.

For the moment, he just stood, offering an encouraging wag of his tail and wondering if Tavi wouldn't tempt her out of her defensive walls.

Comfort, however small, nestled it’s way in her chest. The language spoken between father and son was one that was familiar to her, spoken between her own family.

Maybe she was not so far from home after all?

Distrusting, yet hopeful attention flicked from one to the other, mostly staying on the one who was closer, the boy with the glow — something she’d absolutely never seen from anyone in her homeland. It put an edge to her fear, a curiosity to learn of things that were different she’d carried since she could open her eyes and walk.

”Well…” Yes, the butterfly was indeed a pretty thing, and she could admit to a chase of a number of bugs in her own time, being the scientist that she was. ”I don’t want you to hurt it.” Which, naturally, was her problem.

The small girl took a few steps, tentative, towards the boy, brows still furrowed in her determination to seem aggressive in the face of a stranger. Two, in this case.

Tail was tucked between short, chubby legs, ears flat in her approach. ”Who are you?” Demanding in her fake bravado, ”And where am I?”

'Well', she said, 'I don't want you to hurt it.'

What an easy thing to fix. He crowed out a joyful response without hesitation: I've been chasin' it pretty long, but I'm not hurtin' it, don't worry! Penny, though he hadn't voiced it, had the right of it -- as much as Tavi kept saying so, he didn't really want to catch it, he just wanted to follow it and perhaps get a better look, if it stopped anywhere long enough to let him.

The girl came forward, then, and Tavi wiggled about undaunted by her twisted up face. He was about to invite her on the chase when she asked who he was, where she was! The golden boy blinked, head tilting comically to one side and such a wide smile on his maw that his tongue hung momentarily from his gaping jaws.

I'm Octavian, but you can jus' call me Tavi. It was a good nickname! Less of a mouthful than his own chosen one. Though, it would be longer if he was a Nightshade - a thought that had began to tickle him. If he was here, with his Father, then wasn't he? Mother wasn't around anymore, nor Coyote, and they'd never mentioned any family to him. They had just... been, until they weren't anymore. But the idea still confused him too much to hold his attention.

He bounced down into a play-bow, slow, and purposeful -- she looked so scared, and that wouldn't do! There was nothing scary here.

We're in Elysium, he parroted dutifully, craning his head up at Pennyroyal to see if he'd said it right and beaming even brighter at the nod received. Where'd you come from? D'you wanna chase the butterfly and see the lake and the ivy curtain and the den and- Tavi was cut off by a gentle paw upon his muzzle, and his ringed gaze flicked curiously back up to his Father as the paw was removed only a moment later. The Nightshade was quiet, and preferred to show rather than tell, and Tavi was nothing if not keen to learn.

Little did he know his Father just didn't want him overwhelming the poor kid.

Penny watched as the kids interacted, gaze lifting again to search the area like the girls parents might spring from nowhere to claim her. But there... weren't any. No indication she had been dropped here temporarily or with intent to abandon her. She must've been placed here by Mythris itself -- but he was just glad she was not dropped into the lake.

Tavi in fact chattered away about the bug, explaining that he wasn't hurting it. I knew it! Little shit just had him running amok for no more reason than to enjoy looking at the little thing; Penny wouldn't have it any other way, though. Being home, being back in his family den, it gave him a lot of bad feelings -- brought back memories he loved and feared seeing all the same, hated the way they drenched his face in tears and made his heart ache. His parents, dead, almost all of his littermates scattered to the wind. It was only him and Verbena, now, them and his kids. Kids he would never really be sure were his, other than Tavi, who looked too much like Penny to deny. Kids who had been left behind by their Mother.

The boy was handling it well enough to start, and Penny was keen to let him keep going, nodding as he offered her the name of the pack... until he realized that he wouldn't stop, had gone spiraling down a childs joyful ramblings. With a gentle paw, he tapped his son on the nose to break his concentration, smiling before turning his gaze to the girl again.

I'm Pennyroyal Nightshade, and you're safe here, don't worry. Elysium welcomes you. Valeska would never turn a child away, not even a strange girl nobody knew. She'd not question Tavi taking in a fresh face in need of help. Is anyone with you, little one? He smiled gently, tail wagging between his ankles, hoping to the Five that she didn't have more brothers and/or sisters hidden nearby too.